1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vacuum gauge for measuring total pressure (vacuum pressure) and/or partial pressure of gas components in use of various types of vacuum pressure measuring apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the conventional vacuum gauges, total pressure measurement is effected by the total pressure gauge and partial pressure measurement is performed by the partial pressure gauge that is completely independently performed from the former measurement. In other words, no correlation exists in both the pressure measurement.
As such a conventional total pressure gauge, the Bayard Alpart type ionization gauge and the Penning gauge are known, while the magnetic sector mass spectrometer and the quadrupole mass spectrometer are used as the conventional partial pressure gauge.
As is well known in this field, the above-described total pressure gauges provide advantages of simple construction as well as stable measurement.
However, they represent different sensitivity depending upon various types of gas species, resulting in poor reliability on the measured pressure values. Accordingly, the real total pressure value cannot be measured unless the total pressure measurement is performed by employing corrections based on the types of the gas species to be measured.
Although the conventional partial pressure gauges such as mass spectrometer are in complex arrangements and also represent fluctuations in the measurement of various types of gas species, but it features to provide extremely stable conditions with respect to the ion current ratio of the gas components.
In accordance with the conventional pressure measurement, the total pressure and the partial pressure are independently measured by the total pressure gauge and the mass spectrometer, respectively. As a result, reliable values may not be obtained in both the total and partial pressure measurement since the above-described inherent errors are contained therein.
An object of the present invention is to provide a vacuum gauge for stably and precisely measuring the total pressure of vacuum and/or the partial pressure of gas components.